They didn't happen to catch the people's attention. They happened because bad people did bad things.

The objective standard of evil is the law of God, or, better yet, the life and character of Jesus Christ.

Bad things are things which cause sickness, suffering and death. It's true that now that sin has entered into the world, things are complicated. For example, one farmer prays for rain while another needs sun just a couple of miles away. However, if we ponder how these things started, that is, how the bad things came into being when there were only good things, it may help us to better understand the solution.

Let me mention two specific things that came to my mind when I posted this thread: the animal kingdom and natural disasters.

God did not design that animals should kill each other. Yet after sin, we see that killing is a part of nature. Animals are designed to kill. How did they get that way? Did God change them? Or has an enemy done this as well?

Similar question for natural disasters. Early Christians viewed these things as the result of evil forces. This view died out first due to Augustine's influence, and then with the enlightenment, with God being the God of the gaps. That is, God was seen as responsible for whatever could not be explained scientifically. But as science explained more and more, God was seen as doing less and less.

With Augustine the role of evil beings slipped in importance, because of the teaching that nothing happens which is not God's will. If only God's will comes to pass, then evil beings become pawns in God's hands.

Tom, how much latitude and freedom does Satan have to cause disease and destruction? Does God have any say in what Satan can and cannot do?

Where do we get the justification to claim that God did not create the carnivores with the type of teeth and digestive system they now have that are clearly designed to digest meat? Let us not repeat the mistake the church made 500 years ago when it demonstrated that it did not understand the creation when it insisted that the earth was the center of the universe. To suggest that all animals were herbivores but the devil changed some to carnivores borders, in my mind, on an insult to the majestic creation of the God I serve. Will we now suggest that Satan loved the herbivores more than he did the carnivores?

Changing only what animals eat wont account for the difference. Ask the australians what happends when you let out rabbits with plenty of food and no predation. Whoever made foxes and eagles eat rabbits must at the same time have made the rabbits much much more reproductive. You cannot change only one factor in anything real and say that the change accounts for all the difference.

What is the risk of simplistic ideas in this ecology discussion?

/Thomas

Whatever bad things you want to mention, are they not explainable by sin? Did God design anything of these things to work incorrectly? Did things change with the fall?

We know there was a literal 7 day creation week and after that week there was no death on the earth so obviously the animals were not carnivores at that point. Now what happened after the fall we can only speculate on, but God must have either modified the animals or allowed Satan to do so. I expect that it was the former, I just can't believe God would allow Satan to make that drastic of a change. Now if we were to believe that God used evolution to create , (which of course does away with nearly all our Judeo/Christian beliefs), then yes the carnivores and prey could have evolved together which makes much more sense, but of course we know that did not happen. I can't wait to get to heaven and go back in time to view the Creation week and have my questions answered.

Redfog

Amalgamation accounts for all of the changes that distorted God's original creation. Satan was responsible for some of the changes, and mankind is responsible for some of it.

2 SM 288
All tares are sown by the evil one. Every noxious herb is of his sowing, and by his ingenious methods of amalgamation he has corrupted the earth with tares. {2SM 288.2}

3 SG 64
But if there was one sin above another which called for the destruction of the race by the flood, it was the base crime of amalgamation of man and beast which defaced the image of God, and caused confusion everywhere. God purposed to destroy by a flood that powerful, long-lived race that had corrupted their ways before him. He would not suffer them to live out the days of their natural life, which would be hundreds of years. {3SG 64.1}

3 SG 75
Every species of animal which God had created were preserved in the ark. The confused species which God did not create, which were the result of amalgamation, were destroyed by the flood. Since the flood there has been amalgamation of man and beast, as may be seen in the almost endless varieties of species of animals, and in certain races of men. {3SG 75.2}